As the reverberations on the 11 March attack by a U.S. soldier on two Afghan villages in Helmand province continue to abrade U.S.-Afghan relations, the deteriorating security situation there after a decade of foreign military intervention will more than likely claim another victim – the long-proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.Why?Because the incident and its consequences underline beyond any doubt the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, and no one is likely to invest in a multi-billion dollar…

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Canada’s natural resources minister told delegates at the International Energy Forum in Kuwait that his country was on the cusp of becoming an “energy superpower.” Canada ranks No. 6 in terms of global oil production, but much of its crude exists in the form of oil sands. European leaders are considering a measure that would classify oil sands as an environmental issue, prompting Canada to threaten to take the issue to the World Trade Organization. With the U.S. political system in a deadlock over Canadian crude, the Ottawa government is now working…

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Solar, wind and biofuels saw global revenue expand by 31% in 2011. With all the negative hype put out by Big Oil and its acolytes, you’d have thought the green energy market had crashed rather than growing by a third.But investment in green energy rose only 5% over the year, which tells me that somebody is making a lot of money and others are losing out. Green Tech Media reports,“…costs of solar panels fell by more than 40 percent last year, while installations grew by 69 percent, yielding a 29-percent increase in solar market…

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The impacts of higher oil and gasoline prices are beginning to ripple across the economy.  Wells Fargo Economics reported today that higher energy prices increased the producer price index (PPI) by 0.4 percent in February 2012 which was the highest monthly gain in the PPI in five months. Wholesale gasoline prices were up for the second-straight month, increasing 4.3 percent, home heating oil was up 5.3 percent and residential electric power prices increased 0.6 percent.The growth in domestic natural gas production from shales has decoupled…

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The biggest and most promising European shale gas deposits are located in Poland. The EIA estimates that the Polish shale gas reserves cover more than 300 years of domestic consumption. The unconventional reserves exceed the conventional ones by the factor of 32. So far 109 licences have been granted to national and international groups in Poland. Poland imported more than 10bn cubic metres of natural gas from Russia in 2011. On top of it, coal is used for 90% of electric power generation. Therefore the political support for the development of…

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